My first son was born in a freestanding birth center. He was not circumcised. He wore cloth diapers.
On his second visit to the pediatrician, he received his first vaccine. My mother’s partner disapproved. It’s not good for him, she said. In the haze of those first few newborn days, I wondered if I was doing the right thing.
I rolled with the standard vaccine schedule because I wanted to be able to put my son in childcare and eventually kindergarten. Fighting the system seemed to be too much ...

A Conversation with Walker Karraa, PhD, on Perinatal Mental Illness
By Barbra Elenbaas, ACNM Writer & Editor
Be sure to check out the other half of my interview with Walker on page 32 of the Fall 2014 issue of Quickening.
In your words, what is Stigmama?
Stigmama.com is a writing site. It is a creative space. It is dedicated to sharing writing about the stigma of mental illness in motherhood. It’s not a resource site or a support site. If you have a client or patient needing treatment, as...

A shorter version of this piece can be found in the Diversification and Inclusion (D/I) column in the Fall issue of Quickening. If you are interested in reading future pieces related to diversification and inclusion, please look for the D/I column in Quickening.
Catchers in Training: Lions and Tigers and Diversity
What went wrong, and right, with the 59th Annual Meeting’s Opening General Session
By Liz Donnelly, Anna Tran, and Jyesha Wren
Student Nurse Midwives at the University of Ca...

By Ginger Breedlove, CNM, PhD, FACNM, ACNM President and Tanya Tanner, CNM, PhD, MBA, RN, Healthy Birth Initiative Task Force Chair
As midwives, we’ve known forever that birth is a natural process and not a medical emergency, that women’s bodies are best left to do what they were built to do, and that physiologic birth gives the best start to moms and babies. Warnings about unnecessary intervention in childbirth date back nearly 20 years, to 1996, when the World Health Organization first call...

By Ginger Breedlove, CNM, PhD, APRN, FACNM, ACNM President
It’s the first week of October, a special time each year when we celebrate midwifery! National Midwifery Week provides an opportunity for each of us to reach out to someone uncertain or confused about our scope of practice, the types of midwives, or the safety of midwifery care in a variety of settings.
I challenge everyone to engage in at least one conversation this week about the emerging role of midwifery in the United States –...

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